Amy Julia Becker is the author of A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations and a Little Girl Named Penny (Bethany House), named one of the Top Books of 2011 by Publisher's Weekly, and Penelope Ayers: A Memoir. Her next book, Small Talk: Learning from my Children about What Matters Most (Zondervan) will be published in October of 2014. A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she blogs regularly for Christianity Today about faith, family, disability, and culture. She is also the author of two ebooks, the forthcoming What Every Woman Needs to Know About Prenatal Testing: Insights from a Mom who has Been There, and Why I Am Both Spiritual and Religious. Her essays have appeared in the Motherlode blog of the New York Times, the Atlantic online, First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hartford Courant, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, The Huffington Post, and Parents.com. Amy Julia lives with her husband Peter and three children, Penny, William, and Marilee, in western Connecticut.

We had Marilee’s parent/teacher conference yesterday morning. We heard about her leadership in the classroom and the play she is writing with her friend Nathan. She’s kind to the other kids. She loves math. And she loves writing–especially acrostic poems.…

White Picket Fences addresses the topic of privilege, giving particular attention to race, class, and disability. I chose to use the term “African American” most of the time within these pages because studies show that white people implicitly associate the…

When I started to really engage with the problem of privilege, I wanted to figure out how to fix it. I studied the issues by reading books and listening to podcasts and watching documentary films. I prayed and even fasted…

Candy, mindless scrolling through my phone, checking email instead of working on something of substance, avoiding exercise and time outside, keeping conversation light instead of asking the deeper and more interesting questions… I so often live in this shallow place,…

Today was Halloween, and Halloween is now a holiday, like many others, that brings up the subject of political correctness. Some costumes obviously disrespect people of other races and cultures. Others unintentionally appropriate traditions that cheapen symbols and minimize attire…

Lately I have been getting a lot of questions about books that I recommend for people who want to further understand our racial divides, and that have helped shape my thinking. There are dozens of other books worth reading, and this…

I used to have a hard time calling myself a sinner. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in sin. Conceptually, I’m on board. Sin is everything that separates me from God, from Love, from good and free relationships with…

For the past few years, I’ve been working on a memoir about race, class and disability called White Picket Fences: Turning toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege. Getting the language right around these sensitive topics matters in any…